As is tradition, energy weapons are a lot better than normal guns late game. Guns like Holorifle or Elijah's LAER or even just a fully modded common Laser Rifle wreck the game. Yes, they can't be silenced, but stealth was nerfed heavily in New Vegas compared to Fallout 3, especially in the DLC areas such as Dead Money or Old World Blues where the enemies have additional PE buffs and can detect you even in practically pitch black areas.

Early game though, just gamble for a bit at the casinos and purchase an Anti-Materiel Rifle at the Gun Runners + its mods + ammo. Just make sure to buy the (GRA) version, the normal version doesn't accept weapon mods.

As for Jury Rigging, the thing is you can use any item of the same type for repairs. It's especially awesome for a light armor character, since all clothes are considered light armor, so you can always keep your armor in top condition by just using whatever "dirty pre-war clothes" etc you find on the common enemies. Or in a dumpster.

I just found YCS-186. It makes upping energy tempting, and it seems like it fills the same role as the A-MR, plus I don't have the strength for A-MR, so I would have to burn a feat on Weapon Handling. Though both of these seem too specialized for my tastes. Take it out for a long range one hit kill attempt and quickly switch to something else.

RatSlayer was my favorite gun for most of the game so far. I am sure I killed 95% of everything with it since I found it. I love that thing, but it bounces off Legionary Assassins. I killed everything in Honest Hearts with it except that fiery boss beast.

But I just bought a standard sniper and suppressor, so it's kind of like an upgraded RatSlayer.

Yeah, YCS/186 does great single shot damage but it's way too slow, too situational IMO. The AMR however is basically just a buffed up Sniper Rifle, so it's still fine to use in most situations. You can also mod it up to be just like the Ratslayer, buy the suppressor etc. I cleared out the whole quarry (deathclaw nest) with it.

Later on if you go down the energy weapon route make sure to look into the Laser Commander perk.

YCS is 3 shots/second, vs less than 1 shot/second of the AMR. That makes the AMR way slower.
Edit: Though I see you need to reload YCS after each shot. making the shots per second irrelevant. IMO Both are unusable at anything but long range dedicated sniper.

AMR is not silenced with a suppressor, just reduced from it's howitzer noise level. So you can't count on it, like a real silenced gun.

On paper at least the YCS looks superior to the AMR in the same role.

For a versatile sniper, I like the Gobi, which shoots fast, and has low VATS requirements, making it useful as enemies close. It also has x2 crit chance for regular shots vs x1 for AMR, and 80 Crit damage. On crits it isn't that far behind AMR.

There are no perfect weapons but YCS/AMR seems like very specialized items I can live without

This is getting way off topic. We should have a gun topic. There ware so many cool options in FO:NV.

Well, I come to a town, where most of the population has been put to the sword by the legion and the culprits are still there and confessing to the fact, so I think it's totally appropriate to whip out your rifle and start shooting. I also get a quest to rescue the hostages, which leads to me shooting more legion folk. That doesn't look like something that I'm not supposed to do. It looks like a viable option to me.

Yeah, nothing wrong with reacting this way in Nipton. The assassins are a fucking pain (though from a RP-perspective they kinda make sense), but as iriyap mentioned earlier once you get to The Strip for the first time there's an event which will "neutralise" your rating with the Legion, so if they're giving you a massive headache just make a beeline for Vegas.

Yeah, I am temporarily at least, off the hit list.

After returning from Honest Hearts, these guys were more of a supply of good quality weapons I could sell, than the ridiculous threat they were at early levels.

I basically ran away to Honest Hearts figuring I would return stronger and that is exactly what happened.

My only real gripe is the broken scaling. These guys are supposed to scale, but it's broken. They were an insane difficulty under level 10, they are pretty much easy pickings at 20+.

The level scaling is not "broken" per se, it's just that New Vegas harkens to the older style of cRPG's where the scaling is not so rampant and some enemies/areas are meant to be very hard to impossible at low levels (e.g. all the deathclaw/cazador gating) but a pushover late game. People enjoy this because it gives more meaning to leveling up and makes you feel powerful when you finally "make it".

The level scaling in the DLC's is insanely broken however, please don't wait until you're level 30 or later to do them. You'll be very mad.

Except the Legionary assassins are supposed to be one of the things that scales. Argh!
DLCs are kind of game breaking. I found after Honest Hearts the rest to the game is too easy, because it doesn't scale. I was planning to skip the DLCs until much later as they will only make that worse. I am level 23 and it already seems broken. If I go do all the DLCs and return at level 35+ where where there be any challenge in the regular game?

Damn. I just checked console commands and I can't remove experience. I was thinking to keep removing some, to keep from leveling so much. Already stopped sleeping so I don't get the well rested bonus.

So it looks like scaling/lack of scaling decisions are a mess everywhere. Open world games typical have scaling for a reason. Old school games that didn't scale, had area progression, which seems to be lacking here. Outside of deathclaws I can still pretty much one shot almost any enemy with Ratslayer, and they really don't seem to hurt me unless I just stand around, and Boone, Ed-E will kill them even if I do nothing.

IMO open world and lack of scaling is garbage. Especially once you add DLC that gives much more experience and raises the level cap.

What they should have implemented is scaling but level that gets locked in the first time you visit. That way it's too hard, you leave and come back when you are stronger. But new areas have challenging encounters.

Now you visit a DLC and the game has no challenge on return, or as you are reporting, if you don't do the DLC early it becomes nearly impossible later.

Edit: Mod community to the rescue.
https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/35178/?tab=posts

Lot of mods like this. I will use this to essentially freeze my level, so I can explore with breaking the game any more. Well after I get level 24 for "Weapon Handling", which I kept putting off since I never found an AMR yet.

There's a trait called Logan's Loophole that caps your level at 30.

You can use console commands to swap out one of your current traits for this one. Look up the ID's on the wiki.

Old World Blues also allows you to respec your traits once, but you can't leave the DLC area until you finish it.

Experience mod seems ideal for me. The one I downloaded lets you choose increments between 5% and 300% slower leveling.

But given the way it works, if I put in a big value after already reaching 23-24 it should effectively freeze me there for a LONG time, plus I can always swap in a lower value if/when I want to level again faster.

I think I might do OWB and stay the same level all the way through.

Yeah I avenged Nipton and then took out a squad of Legion Assassins and got some really nice loot! Now that I have Boone, who has a personal grudge against the Legion, I am very tempted to go hunting legionnaires. Partly for the loot and partly because I want to be like Kurt Russel in Tombstone.

"Tell the Caesar that i'm coming! and Hell is coming with me!"